The dangerous-medieval-Islam idea entered the cultural canon as orthodoxy

Evidence

The idea that Islam is medieval and dangerous, as well as hostile and threatening to “us,” for example, has acquired a place both in the culture and in the polity that is very well defined: Authorities can be cited for it readily, references can be made to it, arguments about particular instances of Islam can be adduced from it — by anyone, not just by experts or by journalists. And in turn such an idea furnishes a kind of a priori touchstone to be taken account of by anyone wishing to discuss or say something about Islam. From being something out there, Islam — or rather, the material invariably associated with it — is turned into an orthodoxy of this society. It enters the cultural canon, and this makes the task of changing it very difficult indeed. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 339

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Said’s account of how a stereotype becomes a self-referencing orthodoxy available to anyone is dense and paradigm-shifting about how public knowledge ossifies.

Related

• Western ideological camps all reduce Islam to a scapegoat (similarity 0.82)
• The reified notion of Islam has hindered rather than helped understanding of Muslim societies (similarity 0.82)
• Every portrayal of Islam is an act of willed interpretation, not a description. (similarity 0.81)
• Western discourse reduces all Muslim societies to a single malevolent essence (similarity 0.81)
• The Western canon of Islam was fixed by 1350 and endured for centuries. (similarity 0.81)
• Modernization theory treated Islam as a timeless childish civilization needing rescue. (similarity 0.80)
• Interrogating Western-ness is required to expunge Islamophobia (similarity 0.80)
• The Western canon of Islam was fixed by the mid-fourteenth century (similarity 0.80)
• The mediaeval canon of Islam persisted into the present day (similarity 0.80)
• The mediaeval Christian concept of Islam still shapes Western cultural inheritance today. (similarity 0.80)
• Coercive civilizational labels like West and Islam serve immediate political purposes (similarity 0.80)
• European scholarship on Islam turned disinterested only once Islam ceased threatening Europe. (similarity 0.79)
• Westerners encounter Islam only through pre-framed political and media channels. (similarity 0.79)
• Renaissance scholarship long coexisted with unrevised medieval views of Islam. (similarity 0.79)
• Modern secular authorities have displaced Islam as the arbiter of Muslim social life (similarity 0.79)